Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion End of year round-up?

Our school year has been horrendous, but the silver lining is the small gifted school we're moving to next year. The entire family is counting down the days.

DS9 (2E) has had not a single one of his needs met this year (I've never sat through so many pointless meetings) & would need a year of unschooling to recover, but for the aforementioned new school. Today he wished aloud that just once he could wake up in the morning and say 'yay, it's a school day'. Fingers crossed for that coming true next year.

DD7 hasn't had her academic needs met, but is much squeakier than DS so engineered a few challenges for herself. The new school is giving her the grade skip our current school refused and that she so desperately needs. She is ecstatic about that.

Summer has a couple of camps - science and outdoor - but mostly immediate and extended family time. Can't wait!

Running tally:

Last year (K) - 1 out 10
This year (1) - 8 out of 10

Same school, same policies, different teacher, all the difference. Most of the damage from last year is undone. DS7 still has challenges and is pretty bored. But he came so far on executive function and self control this year, and that is what he needed the most. Now about that teacher assignment for next year .....

Summer camp with beloved after school care director. Just riding bikes, playing Magic and generally goofing around with that all important Trusted Adult close by. He's happy.

Good to hear some positive results. Hugs to fellow strugglers.

Sue

Well, DS is passing all his sophomore HS classes, so that's something. It was dicey there for awhile this spring. He got a 34...again...on the ACT, AP Chem score doesn't arrive till July. The SAT Chem subject test is next week. The anxiety issue seems intermittent, but he has taken some chances, which is really good. I'm meeting with the social worker next week to talk about this issue (I gave up on the counselor who is retiring this month anyway). We will see if his teachers recommend him for next year's APs, he registered for 3. I need to find out when that happens.

Over summer he will take US History and, one hopes, do the AP summer assignments. I wish he'd either try out for the community theater summer play, or else get a job. I really think a job would make a big difference in him.

That is what last year was like for DS. The best I could say is he was passing. Sigh.. It's why things are a bit dicey about the AP classes he wants. Not this years grades but last years. Thus the teachers have to 'think' about it rather than it being a slam dunk.

Any likely places for him to get a summer job. My DD20 got a job a few days ago and we are thrilled, it's her first time finding an actual job? At least where I live few employeers want to hire anyone just for the summer and so it's not real easy to find a summer job.

For the summer theater do they need people to do the backstage work? Perhaps he might find that more interesting. Maybe a volunteer job? Animal Shelter or Library?

I'll be homeschooling DS3.5 in lieu of his attending pre-kindergarten in the fall and am hopeful I will be able to create a good fit for most of his needs.

I reviewed curriculum guidelines for our province and see that he seems to have met the exit targets for grade 1/2 level in math and reading, and has an interest level in sciences well beyond that. Despite being super extroverted, confident, and the size of a 5-year-old now, there is no way he would be a candidate for early entrance into kindergarten emotionally or physically (he still needs a 2.5-3 hour nap mid-day; hardly eats unless fed), and I'm not convinced that the single year acceleration would be much help.

Here's hoping his teacher isn't a moron!

DD still has two weeks to go but is about to finish 5th grade and complete,the second year after her whole grade skip. So far solid As.

Her ability to knuckle down and just crank out the homework assignments has improved tremendously this year as has her handwriting which looks almost adult now - I could not believe the difference when I saw her pseudo-code for a Python project she has started.

She will start middle school (our SD starts this in sixth) August and she will be in the rigorous 8th grade Algebra I track there (3 year Maths acceleration) we will see how this works out - the teacher has the reputation of being a tough teacher which could just mean she is pro rigour (A fantastic thing if true) but as long as she does well by my DD I don't care...

For the summer we will be heading to Reno late June for a long weekend and going to a museum about 2 hours away built on the Sutter's Mill site both of which we are looking forward to. She will also spend 3 weeks away at a residential CTY camp.

The year:
For DD12 - school continues to be a great fit. She is really blossoming into an amazing young lady. She joined the high school robotics team and went from knowing nothing about electronics to be the lead person on that part of the bot. She was sad to see the year end.
DD7 - it was a very bumpy year. She had a teacher who didn't really get her at all and could only see her as a "young one" because she is a year younger due to a grade skip last year from K into 1st. Add to this some really mean little girls and there were days that it was a disaster. But, her violin was great and she is flying through that. She has 2 weeks left of school so I think we'll make it. She is changing schools next year to attend the full time highly gifted program offered in the district. We're cautiously optimistic about the move.

The summer:
we've got a week at relatives, then DD12 is going to band camp for a week. DD7 may go to dance camp for a week, but other than that - nothing set for them.
I am starting a new job at a really cool school, so I can't wait to get in there and get going.

A year ago, I made a big bet on moving here, based in large part on interviewing the local school principal and the district gifted coordinator. They were friendly. They were interested in my child, in all her gory 2e-ness. They said the right things. So I bought a house. And this bet has totally paid off. Our local school has been great. This district doesn't offer gifted classrooms until 4th, but my PG DD's 3rd grade teacher has really worked to do right by her. Our school has a program for kids on the spectrum that has been great for her. And now she has been officially placed in the gifted program for next year. She'll be in a gifted classroom with 4th, 5th, and 6th graders. The gifted teacher is really enthusiastic. Next year is full of promise.

She's signed up for a CTY reading class this summer, and I'm thinking about enrolling her in AoPS pre-algebra 1. Our school district also has a 4-week summer camp program that looks like it might have some good science-focused stuff so I'm still on the fence about pre-algebra because it feels like it would be a lot to do all at once.

DS is 5.5. After we moved here I enrolled him in a private Montessori after 3 years of center daycare. It's been great. His teacher is lovely. His fellow students are lovely. (We had such problems last year initiated by bratty kids in his daycare!) But he didn't win the lottery for the public Montessori. Next year he'll be at our neighborhood school, and if he's in 1st it'll be great. That's still up in the air, though.

If he's a 1st grader then he can also go to the 4-week district summer camp. Which I think would be good for him. After a year of being super independent and self-selecting his work at Montessori school, spending a few weeks supervised by public school teachers with entirely different expectations would probably help ease his way in September. Plus the flier says they have a robotics track. He will be head over heels for that.

DS12 just finished up with 8th grade today and will be a high-schooler in the fall, which I find mind-boggling. As if he didn't grow fast enough as it is, his grade skips put him rather ahead of where my head thinks he ought to be.

It was a trying year, his first in full-time e-school. It's a good fit for him, better than the regular school, but he has so much trouble keeping his focus that it's like pulling teeth to get him to do his work even when I'm sitting behind him and prodding him (literally). We would think about moving him back to regular school if it weren't for the fact that it's so much worse there, where we don't know exactly what he's supposed to be doing and when. At least in e-school we always have his assignments right in front of us. We tried a number of different systems for keeping him organized and on task, with varying degrees of success, and will still be trying to work that out in the fall.

He managed to pull an A in Geometry, at the last second, so he's actually going into high school with a 4.0 GPA -- I was afraid he would go into it with something lower, for a while there. Not that I have any illusions that the boy will manage to keep it, but it would have been sad to see him blow his high school GPA before he even got there. Now he will be doing Algebra II Honors as a freshman, for college credit, so we'll see if he can blow his college GPA.

He's also switching from Spanish to Latin, to see if it helps him to start understanding conjugation -- he had a dreadful time of it in Spanish. Other than that, he'll have regular 9th grade classes, with Computer Programming as gravy.

Overall, it was a good year, but it took way more effort and stress on my part than I would like. I do hope he can get it together next year.

DD (16 in a few days!) is finishing the year well, at least relative to where we were with her in March, which was a bit scary, actually. Her grades are fine, (better than fine, actually) and she is actively working to manage her anxiety, and is developing the discipline to use lifestyle modifications the way that she should, has made strides in not procrastinating and in organizing and being fully responsible for herself. She's figuring it out, slowly but surely.

Summer will mean having her licensed to drive, thus more independently mobile and able to get herself to her summer classes-- at two different institutions. Oh well. She took the initiative and signed herself up for a college testing study skills (self-paced) class at the local CC in addition to her Uni classes. She still needs to work on her test anxiety and also on her ability to predict what she will see on exams, and figure out how to actually STUDY for a test, which she's never had to do until now.

She has settled into a major that she (and we) all think is a much better fit for her than CS/EE was ever going to be, and she is very excited to work on a semi-pro summer theater production.

Should be a busy summer-- which is a good thing. Busy means not having time to think about (er, or "mope" really) some of the stuff that she should just, er-- leave alone. Mostly existential stuff, but interpersonal things, too.

She may actually get paid for doing set work this summer, and I know that she wants to do that so that she can make her year's car payments to us.

It's all good. She stumbled a bit starting college (and I'm really glad that she wasn't doing it living away from home), but she's found her feet and is growing up.